1/26/15 | Sugar Gliders

Heyo Family!!

This week flew by so fast!!  I hardly remember what happened!  We had some district trainings and exchanges and thats honestly about all that I remember.  We've been working hard this week to find YSA but are still struggling.  YSA lives off of referrals and we haven't received any referrals for over a week now, but we still keep our faith up and trust that God will start blessing us with referrals and miracles.

We already had one miracle occur last Sunday night. we were looking for a place to proselyte and the Spirit led us to this neighborhood that we hadn't noticed before.  We started knocking and kept knocking for a long time without much success.  Later we OYM'ed this guy and he was interested in being baptized so we stopped by Monday night to visit with him, his name is Fabian.  He is super elect!!!  We taught him the Restoration, Gospel, LofC, WofW and he loved it all.  He told us that living the commandments would be way too easy since he had already decided to live a righteous lifestyle.  He came to church yesterday, he even drove the entire time on a flat tire because he didn't want to fix it and be late.  I'm really happy that we'll be able to baptize the last sunday of the transfer and and on Elder Hutchison's last Sunday.  God is Great!!  

This morning I was studying in Mosiah and reading the accounts of King Limhi and Alma the Elder and how they both went through respective trials.  I was studying on how to stay positive during trials and how to learn from them.  It's interesting to compare and contrast the experiences of King Limhi and Alma's people.  They were both brought into bondage, but the way they reacted is what sets them apart.  King Limhi's people relied on their own strength and murmured and complained whereas Alma's people relied wholly on the Lord and cheerfully and patiently submitted their wills to God's will.  In the end they both were delivered by God.  We see 2 excellent examples of different ways to approach trials and the respective outcomes of each.  1 way to react is to complain and fight against the trial and eventually be compelled to be humble, in the end you learn a great lesson, but you had to make it so much harder for yourself to learn it. The 2nd way is the much better way to approach trials.  Humble yourself and rely on God to give you strength to endure and you will be able to pass through the trial and still learn a great lesson.  There's so much more that I learned from looking at those 2 experiences,  I highly recommend reading those experiences in Mosiah.  

Oh yeah! I forgot some other miracles that occurred yesterday.  At Church a random member came up and told us to write down a list of groceries that we needed so she could buy them for us.  It was a miracle since we are all out of MSF, so we weren't planning on buying anything.  Then right after that another member came up to us and said she is going to set up a time to feed us and let us know.  Miracles come in many different ways:)  

Also we got to play with a sugar glider the other night, super cool little creatures.

I love you guys!

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

1. Me holding sugar glider

2. Also here's a pic of a really cool sunset from last night

3. heres a pic of my and my bday cake from a couple weeks ago, thanks again mom!!

1/20/15 | Remember the Name

Hey Family!!

We had a really hard time finding people to teach this past week which led to an overall poor week.  But we worked hard and diligently and constantly sought to find the elect.  We got some exciting news the other night, we picked up Ft Myers and Naples, so now theyre apart of our mission.  We got a new zone with 30 missionaries in it! Turns out they're pretty lazy and not too obedient, but we'll whip that out of them once they get integrated into the mission.  Thanks for all the bday stuff! Especially loved the bday cards and the papa johns delivery:)  

  This past week we did a zone training on the importance of remembering names, like the name of Christ as well as our family names. The AP's showed up, so that was a bit nerve wracking, but it still worked out great.  We trained on how we can take upon ourselves the name of Christ and always represent Him and our families as we go out each day. We trained on making changes and becoming who God needs us to be.  It was really good and the Spirit was very strong and helped the zone learn what they needed to learn. overall it was a good training, the Spirit was strong and we were all edified.

Miracle time! Late Wednesday we were talking and discussing how we can find since we had been struggling to find people to teach.  I remembered the story dad shared with me last monday about the power of fasting, so I suggested that we faston Thursday.  We both felt good about it and decided to fast for 2 elect referrals and to find a YSA to teach.  Throughout the day on Thursday we got 3 referrals and found 2 YSA to work with.  It was an amazing miracle to see!  There really is power in fasting!

I was reading in Mosiah 27 last week and studying the conversion of Alma the Younger again.  Alma has one of the greatest recorded stories of the power of repentance and change.  In verses 24 and 25 we see how this great change occurred.  God wants us all to have an Alma the Younger conversion experience. To change from our carnal state to a state of righteousness.  I've been introspecting on what things I can change and how to change them so that I can become who God needs me to become, that's what we emphasized at Zone Training.  All things are possible with God!

Also on Sunday night we got chased by a dog for the first time in my mission.  It was late and pitch black outside and we were finishing knocking doors and heading back to the car when we saw a really big dog standing in the middle of the road up ahead.  Some other dogs started barking at us which drew the really big dogs' attention to us so he started barking at us and running really fast towards us! I've never seen Elder Hutchison move so fast! He took off before I even knew what was going on!  We ran for a while until we outran the dog.  Then we headed to the car using a different route, just to run into the dog again when we were almost to the car.  Again, Elder Hutchison took off running soo fast and the dog started running too.  We ran and got in the car in record time and the dog just kept barking at us from outside the car.  that's my story for the week:)

I love you guys lots, Have a great week!!

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

Heres a couple pics, one with the city of miami in the background and the other is with Elder Zwick, I'm finally not on the top row!:

1/12/15 | The Weekly

Dear Family!

What a busy week!  I only worked 2 days in my area this week!  On wednesday we had MLC with all the ZL's and STL's and Elder Zwick.  It was really good and inspiring, Elder Zwick is a really good teacher.  Then on Thursday we went on an exchange with a struggling companionship. That was super fun! I got to ride my bike through the crazy streets of Miami.  Then on Friday we had zone conference all day and had to help out another companionship, then we got to work on Saturday.  I'm so exhausted right now!  But after taking a trip to downtown Miami and playing some streetball I should be good to go for the upcoming week:)

We really struggled to find elect YSA this week.  But some miracles still occurred.  We've been working with a LA named Ashley for the past 3 weeks and she finally came to Church and will be coming every week!!  It's so awesome to be able to rescue those who have wandered from the path!  Also at church we were making a final effort to get people to church by calling everyone we had in the planner, and as we were calling our long time investigator Samar came walking in! A member had just went and picked her up, it was a miracle!!

I've been studying this week in Helaman 3 on Sanctification.  In this chapter it talks about the thousands who joined the Church of God and the things they did to strengthen their testimonies.  They did the basics.  They were humble, prayed often, strengthened their faith and these things filled their souls with "joy and consolation."  It purified and sanctified their hearts "which sanctification cometh because of their yielding their hearts unto God." To sanctify means to "make holy or free from sin."  to yield means to "surrender, or give way to force". We must sanctify ourselves and submit our will to His will if we want any growth or change to occur.  That's what we will be focusing on in Zone training to go off of what Elder Zwick mentioned multiple times throughout his training's.  

haha, funny story time.  Yesterday we were rounding up investigators and tried William. He kind of dropped us but he was super elect when we first met with him so we tried one more time to get him to come to Church.  While we were talking with him his little dog came out and was walking around our feet, then all of the sudden Elder Hutchison said, "What!?! Your dog is peeing on me!!" we looked down and Elder Hutchisons shoe and the bottom of his pants were covered in pee.  So William took the dog inside but didn't get a towel or anything, so we asked him again if he would come to church and he said no.  Elder Hutchison wasn't too happy at this point so he said, "come on man, your dog just peed on me, you have to come to church now!"  William still didn't accept but it was super funny:)

I love you guys and hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Spencer Bailey

1/5/15 | Bring in the New

Dear Familio!

What a week!  We are so happy with our zone right now! we got 4 baptisms and got way more people to church this past week and as well we set a goal of 250 Harvest Blessings and we got 272!!  Setting these little goals to achieve the big ones has really helped our zone out  a lot!  We had a lot of fire last week and worked really hard to achieve what God needed us to achieve.  Even though we had 2 district training's, 2 fire exchanges, 1 full exchange and new years eve it was amazing that we were able to pull this off since we had a crazy week.  

God is so Great!  We had a goal of 77 BG and made sure that each blessing was quality.  We had been praying to know where to Harvest and this one junction on the map had been sticking out to us for a while, so we went down there on Monday and found an awesome town house complex right in the middle of the Ghetto.  We worked there for the majority of the week and found so many elect people, and we found out how to work selflessly.  The majority of the people that we found we passed to members of our zone and God truly compensated us.  We found an elect YSA named Sarah and she came to Church yesterday even after being antied by her sister 2 days ago.  We set really good expectations on the first visit about what we plan to help her do as well as we set expectations of opposition.  Because we set those expectations we were able to bring her back after she was antied.  We know the Spirit was working with her and helped her come back and still have that desire to be baptized.

This past week I learned more about just how omniscient God is.  I was reading from Jacob to Mosiah and was able to see the wisdom in Heavenly Father for inspiring Nephi to start the small plates and for inspiring Mormon to include the small plates.  Without the Small Plates we wouldn't have many of the revelations from Nephi or Isaiah, or from Jacob or from any of the Prophets writings contained in the Small Plates.  I read a quote by Elder Holland which said something like "we received more from the Small Plates than we did from the lost 116 page manuscript.  We have more revelation and knowledge about God and His plan for us than that which was written on the Large Plates."  It really hit me just how important those 142 pages are and that we should carefully and prayerfully study over those books.  

Theres an awesome quote that we heard yesterday in Elder's quorum that I'd like to share, "Next time you're tempted to groan, you might try to laugh instead." -Elder Wirthlin

I love you guys!

Elder Spencer Bailey